Research Project
8428030
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Parents continue to exert significant influence on their child's alcohol-related attitudes and behavior while in college, particularly via protective factor such as alcohol-specific communication and parental monitoring. Only a small number of studies, employing limited types of modalities and content (e.g., mailed parent handbooks and social media campaigns), have evaluated the efficacy of parent-based interventions (PBIs). These studies have documented the benefits of brief PBIs to reduce alcohol risk among college students, though their modest effects have led to calls to develop, refine and evaluate new PBIs. Further, parents typically underestimate their own child's alcohol use and approval of drinking behaviors. In addition, parents overestimate how approving other college parents are towards their child's alcohol use, and underestimate how proactive other parents are in talking to their college-aged students about alcohol. Social norms theory predicts that these misperceptions contribute to parents holding more permissive attitudes toward drinking in the college environment, while also decreasing parental motivation to become involved with the issue. Moreover, parents' attitudes are reliably linked to their child's own alcohol-related attitudes and behaviors in college. Thus, correcting parents' misperceptions via normative feedback is likely to reinforce parental disapproval of excessive drinking and produce greater quality and frequency of communication and monitoring. The proposed study seeks to evaluate the effects of the Parent FIT START (Parent Feedback Intervention Targeting Students' Transitions & Alcohol Risk Trajectories) project that will be delivered to groups of parents during summer orientation sessions to (1) reduce parents' normative misperceptions of other parents' attitudes and their own child's drinking while reinforcing the importance of maintaining dialogue with their child about parental alcohol-related attitudes and expectations, and (2) subsequently impact students' alcohol risk across the first-year of college. During orientation, intervention condition parents (with children of the same gender) will receive interactive normative feedback derived live in their group setting pertaining to other parents' approval levels regarding their child's drinking in college, along with feedback about the drinking behaviors of typical LMU first-year students (same gender as their child). Normative feedback will be presented using novel interactive wireless handheld clicker technology recently shown by PI LaBrie to immediately correct normative misperceptions and reduce permissive alcohol-related attitudes and risky behaviors among students. This approach is well supported in theory and practice and the novel extension to parents is expected to promote more disapproving parental attitudes towards alcohol use as well as increase active, informed and sustained parental dialogue with their incoming student about alcohol-related issues. Enhanced communication of parent attitudes and monitoring will, in turn, influence the attitudes of the child and result in less risky alcoholuse in college in comparison to control group peers.
